Fluorescence microscopy is widely used in biological research to visualize morphology from a whole organism down to the cellular level. In the field of high content screening (HCS), fluorescence microscopy followed by image analysis is used to quantify the reactions of cells to candidate drugs at varying dosages. This has typically involved imaging microwell plates, for example, automated microscopes limited to at least approximately 1-2 seconds per imaging position, and outfitted with cameras with up to 4.66 megapixels. Such microscopes therefore achieve throughputs of about 4.66 megapixels per second (Mpx/s) at best. For 7.3 mm square wells imaged at 0.5 μm/pixel, this corresponds to approximately 73 minutes per 96-well plate. The imaging throughput represents a bottleneck to drug discovery efforts. A conventional automated wide-field microscope builds up an image by stitching together 103-104 smaller fields-of-view (FOVs), each imaged by a microscope objective. After each of the small FOV is acquired, the sample is moved by a distance equal to the linear dimension of the field of view before the next image can be taken. Additionally, the position of the microscope objective is adjusted so that the subsequent image is in focus. Consequently, most of the image acquisition time is spent on mechanical movement rather than on photon collection. Therefore, there is a need in the art to address one or more of the abovementioned shortcomings.